Word: matter
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...very fabric of space and time, places where long-cherished laws of nature simply do not apply. So unbelievable and paradoxical are these notions that they have led to what Wheeler calls "the greatest crisis ever faced by physics." Says he: "Never before did we think that matter could be so ephemeral...
...whole stars can vanish from sight within black holes, literally crushed out of existence, where has their matter gone? To another place and another time? Where did it come from? In searching for answers to the fundamental questions raised by black holes, scientists are infringing on the realm of philosophers and theologians. They are trying to find the meaning of life, of being, of the universe itself...
Even in an age that has witnessed everything from the harnessing of the atom to flights across the solar system, the thought of matter going down a kind of cosmic drain stretches the mind. It is totally at odds with common sense and, a cynic might say, smacks slightly of selfdelusion, if not madness. After all, the frightful Heffalump turned out to be only Pooh with his head stuck in a jar of honey...
...Einstein's theory is correct, black holes are the natural consequences of the death of giant stars. In what astronomers call catastrophic gravitational collapse, most of the matter contained in such a dying star begins falling in toward the stellar center. If the conditions are right, the matter crushes together with such enormous force that it literally compresses itself out of existence. The star becomes what mathematicians call a "singularity." Its matter is squeezed into an infinitesimally small volume, and it simultaneously becomes infinitely dense and has an infinitely high gravitational force. At the point of singularity, time and space...
Defining a black hole for a layman taxes the imagination and vocabulary of even the most articulate scientist. The matter that formed the hole has long since disappeared, like Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire cat, leaving behind only the disembodied grin of its gravity. From afar, that gravity has the same effect on objects in space as it did when its matter existed. But closer...